Member's Off-site Blogs

The value of life

Congratulations to the two miners, Todd and Brant, and to their rescuers. Their survival is a complex fantastic story at the forefront of human endurance, good luck, planning and great community spirit.

The media reports on the unfolding events were in general quite good.

The various outlets, print and TV, have a complex dynamic of necessarily reporting the news as it happens as well as the ingrained urge to corner the grand prize without offending too many people. Checkbook journalism for exclusive interviews has never been a proper way towards "objectivity" (a journalist who believes in objectivity is deluded anyway — as no matter what, the reporting always become part of the calculated importance of the story) but in some circumstances cheque book journalism can help victims or accidental subjects...

But It can foster the bitchy lower level of the media whose reporters have degrees of genuinely felt attitudes — and sometimes not so genuine tactics — in managing a story via exposure of other's emotional up-swelling, and their own. Reporters can cry. Reporters should cry at human tragedy and triumphs but they should not cry because they loose ratings... Only executives should do that and this can complicate matters in the bidding.

But I suppose it would be the ultimate act of carrying on with the community spirit if ALL the commercial media organisation got together and pooled their resources to avoid the sensationalism of exclusivity which can create tension (they call it competition) and divide hearts in their own community.

But whatever happens on this front, the community spirit that flowed in Beaconsfield is also the same that flows through cities like Baghdad, albeit expressed with different emotions including anger.

Families whose members have been bombed, maimed, shot by execution squads deserve our prayers if we believe, but overall they deserve our humanity. Our warring leaders have failed miserably on this front. Our leaders may claim they had weighed difficult options... but they did it with deliberately manufactured crook scales. By "freeing" Iraq under false pretenses they knew they were also unleashing some of the terrorism that Saddam for right or wrong reason, had managed to keep underfoot... Back in 2002 we knew that. Diplomacy was an option, difficult as it was, but it was deliberately rejected by a warring Bush because a peaceful outcome would not have given control of iraq to the US.

Our warring misleaders dismiss in their own hearts — in a too flippant way even if they show crocodile gravitas in stage-managed media spruik — that when they (every bullet, every bomb fired is done under their explicit general orders) shoot someone — whether insurgents or innocent, these people have relatives, friends, mates... children. Yes and kids get hurt, killed... People in such situations seek justice, they even seek revenge... A "oops-sorry collateral damage" is an insult to them... It is an insult to our own humanity...

Whatever their beliefs, our targets, accidental or not, are human beings... The destruction of Falluja by the US armies was disgusting butchery using illegal weaponry. People, to which we do this kind of horror, cannot forget. Would you? Their extended families on all sides mixed, Shia and Sunni melange, cannot forget... They have the spirit to live their lives as they see fit, even if sometimes we feel they are doing it wrong and do not manage their social dynamics efficiently. They live a life that we — by "our" warring support (We do not support war here on this site, but "our" government do, so we are responsible for letting them get away with murder —murder it is) to invade illegally — have interfered with, using brutal means which have been received with mixed "comprehensions" by the Iraqi...

Most of the iraqi people do not understand the complexity of the game, because a game it is, a deadly game, that is being played and has been played so far on their behalf. Saddam the tyrant is gone but why aren't the liberating armies gone? Why are they settling in as if they were at home? Fighting terrorism? The presence of the foreign armies are creating most of the terrorism... Reactively. So... More resentment coming our way...

As I write this page, our Prime Grocer has grabbed the miner's front stage on the box, upstaging the press conference given by the doctor at the Launceston hospital where Todd and Grant are being assessed... Yes, Another fanfaroneous Johnnee-ism in opportunism... It would be fantastic if our glorious leader recognised that the great survival "Aussie" spirit is not unique in the world, but survival also exists in those poor humans we bomb or shoot in Iraq, even if they do survival in a different way for their own tragedies and their ways are not as "Aussie" as ours. Yes, terrorists are also murderers who do a lot of the damage, but "our" intervention there has unleashed them like a pack of rabid dogs... We should have known that... We knew that here! But the Bush, Blair and Howard of this world did not want to know... They had lies to justify... and gory glory to grab.

Some people reading this here are already horrified that I link these two events: The rescue of two trapped miners and the war in Iraq... Yes I will do this without restraint because we are rightfully jubilant at saving two trapped miners, while on the other hand we do not shed tears as we went to war and helped kill in excess of 100,000 people, for dubious reasons underpinned by lies...

Had our media done the same investigative and proper job in Iraq, as they did with the miners in Tasmania, we may not be there now and proper diplomatic activities may have solved the impasse, if real impasse there was, without blood being spilled... but sadly now, to be spilled for a long time to come,..

Our misleaders should resign forthwith — for having misled the world and they should apologise to all, for the suffering they have caused... but we all know they wont...

And let's be real; here, Whether 9/11 happened or not, the disgraceful little Bush was going to attack Iraq no matter what... This is the most shameful travesty of misleadership leading to a massive tragedy.

But let's rejoice.

The freedom of the miners from their underground cage might be the start for enlightenment in all the necessary places about the value of life — all life in enlightened peace to share.